There’s a nice piece in today’s New York Times detailing Scribner’s forthcoming rerelease of Hemingway’s 1929 A Farewell to Arms, which sports numerous alternate endings in an appendix. Ernesto had a hell of a time getting the closing lines just right and rejected one after another. Years later he said he produced 39 endings, ranging from curt one-liners to multiple paragraphs, but his archive at the JFK Library in Boston actually has yielded closer to 47 different takes. Some of the different endings have appeared in various scholarly works but this is the first time they’ll be gathered together for joint publication.

The book also will feature some additional paragraphs and other material, which are candy for Hemingway heads, along with the original cover.

If you’re looking for something great to read on your summer vacation, skip the bestseller crap and pick this up instead. If you’ve never read it you’ll be blown away, and if you haven’t read since high school or college you’ll be blown away again. He’s not Hemingway for nothing.